¹ For a brief overview of Grüneisen's life and work see the obituary by Heimpel, Herman in Historische Zeitschritft 218 (1974): 521–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gabriella Annas recounts the compelling story of the journey to Michaelbeuern, reconstructed from Grüneisen's private journal, in a podcast dedicated to the history of the Reichstagsakten, Nr. 3: “Die ‘Deutschen Reichstagsakten’: Archiv- und Bibliotheksrecherchen einst und jetzt,” accessed 22 July 2023, https://www.historischekommission-muenchen.de/podcasts#c446.

² Weigel, Helmut and Grüneisen, Henny, eds., Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Ältere Reihe. XIX/I (Göttingen, 1969)Google Scholar; Johannes Helmrath and Gabriele Annas, eds., Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Friedrich III. Reichsversammlung zu Frankfurt 1454 (=Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Ältere Reihe. XIX/2) and Reichsversammlung zu Wiener Neustadt 1455 (=XIX/3) (Munich, 2013); Hardy, Duncan, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire: Upper Germany, 1346–1521 (Oxford, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ I am grateful to Professor Annas for providing these notes from the project archives of the Reichstagsakten in Frankfurt, as well as a fresh typescript of certain critical passages.

⁴ An accessible and updated overview of events in Housley, Norman, “Giovanni da Capestrano and the Crusade of 1456,” in Crusading in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Housley, Norman (Basingstoke, 2004), 94–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 215–24. See also Mixson, James D., The Crusade of 1456: Sources and Documents in Translation (Toronto, 2022)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Among many works see, e.g., Cassidy-Welch, Megan, ed., Remembering the Crusades and Crusading (London, 2017)Google Scholar.

⁶ Doležalová, Lucie and Rivers, Kimberly Ann, eds., Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies (Krems, 2013)Google Scholar and Corbellini, Sabrina, Murano, Giovanna, and Signore, Giacomo, eds., Collecting, Organizing and Transmitting Knowledge (Turnhout, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁷ Neddermeyer, Uwe, Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch: Schriftlichkeit und Leseinteresse im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1998)Google Scholar; Hobbins, Daniel, Authorship and Publicity Before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Hearsay, Belief, and Doubt: The Arrival of Antichrist in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” in Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages, eds. Lisa Wolverton and David Mengel (Notre Dame, 2015), 436–67.

⁸ Pearsall, Derek, “The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and Their Modern Interpreters,” in Imagining the Book, eds. Stephen M. Kelly and John Jay Johnson (Turnhout, 2005), 17–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cited here at 18, 25, and 28.

⁹ Portnykh, Valentin, “Exploring the Rebirth of a Chronicle: Why Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolimitana Gained New Life in the Fifteenth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 74 (2023): 39–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Vienna OP 37, for example, bears a cross on its front cover and a contemporary label signaling its contents as “useful for preaching crusade against the Turks,” and an “excellent book” for signing crusaders—and preaching to them.

¹¹ Salzburg, St. Peter, B IX 28, fol. 126a; Augustin Jungwirth, Katalog der Handschriften des Stiftes St. Peter in Salzburg, [Salzburg 1910–1912], now online, accessed 19 July 2023, https://manuscripta.at/diglit/jungwirth/0001. If the reference to “miles” here is roughly equivalent to the premodern “Austrian mile” of 7.5 km, the distance rendered here, of approximately 600 km, is remarkably accurate.

¹² Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, ed. R. F. Kerr, 5th ed. (St. Louis, 1923), 2:410–11.

¹³ Heinz Dopsch, “Michaelbeuern,” in Germania Benedictina: Die benediktinischen Mönchs- und Nonnenklöster in Österreich und Südtirol, vol. 2, eds. Ulrich Faust and Waltraud Krassnig, (St. Ottilien, 2001), 655–758, esp. 672–77; Gerald Hirtner and Michael Fröstl, “Die Romreisen des Abts Georg Liebenknecht von Michaelbeuern (1448/1450). Edition, Kommentar und Übersetzung,” in Nach Rom Gehen. Monastische Reisekultur von der Spätantike bis in die Neuzeit, eds. Peter Erhart and Jakob Kuratli Hüeblin (Vienna, 2021), 165–82; Gerald Hirtner and Michael Brauer, “Ablassbriefe aus Rom und Stoffe aus Florenz: Die Romreisen des Abts Georg Liebenknecht von Michaelbeuern in den Jahren 1448 und 1450,” in Vedi Napoli e Poi Muori – Grand Tour der Mönche, eds. Peter Erhart and Jakob Kuratli Hüeblin (St. Gall, 2014), 187–95. For the reforms of Melk see now Meta Niederkorn-Bruck and Gottfried Glaßner, eds., 600 Jahre Melker Reform 1418–2018 (Melk, 2022).

¹⁴ Flamm, Heinz, “Bader – Wundarzt – Medicus,” in Bader, Wundarzt, Medicus. Ausstellungskatalog (Klosterneuburg, 1996), 7–40Google Scholar; Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, 2003), 20–22Google Scholar; Helga Schuller, “Dos-Praebenda-Peculium,” in Festschrift für Friedrich Hausmann, ed. Herwig Ebner (Graz, 1977), 453–87.

¹⁵ Hirtner and Fröstl, “Die Romreisen,” 168.

¹⁶ Ghosh, Shami, “Rural Commercialisation in Southern Germany, c.1200–c.1500: Sources, Problems, and Potential,” Mediaeval Studies 82 (2020): 207–74Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Key for these reflections are three essays by Van Engen, John: “Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,” Church History 77 (2008): 257–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Conversion and Conformity in the Early Fifteenth Century,” in Conversion: Old Worlds and New (Rochester, 2003), 30–65; and “Freedom, Obligation, and Customary Practice: The Pursuit of Religious Life in the Later Medieval and Early Reform Period,” in Über Religion Entscheiden. Religiöse Optionen und Alternativen im Mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Christentum, eds. Matthias Pohlig and Sita Steckel (Tübingen, 2021), 39–76.

¹⁸ Norman Housley, ch. 4, “Intentions and Motivations,” in Contesting the Crusades (Malden, MA, 2006), 75-98.

¹⁹ Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 1799, fol. 168v: “An votum ad martirum sustinendum excedat in perfectionem votum religionis. Respondeo quod sic.”

²⁰ BAV Cod Pal 368, fol. 283b, also noted in Pastor, History of the Popes, 410.

²¹ Salzburg, B IX 28, fols. 128r-v; Portnykh, “Rebirth,” 22. On the comet of 1456 see Jane Jervis, Cometary Theory in Fifteenth-Century Europe (Hingham, MA, 1985), esp. 42–64, and the account appearing in The Crusade of 1456 (n. 4 above), 137–41; Michael H. Shank, “Academic Consulting in Fifteenth-Century Vienna: The Case of Astrology,” in Texts and Contexts in Ancient and Medieval Science. Studies on the Occasion of John E. Murdoch's Seventieth Birthday, eds. Edith Dudley Sylla and Michael McVaugh (Leiden, 1997), 245–70.

²² Susanna A. Throop, “Zeal, Anger and Vengeance: The Emotional Rhetoric of Crusading,” in Vengeance in the Middle Ages. Emotion, Religion and Feud, eds. Susanna Throop and Paul Hyams (Farnham, 2010), 177–202. Cf. Melk Cod. 1799, fols. 160r-v and 162r-169v, noted in Portnykh, Valentin, “Le Traité d' Humbert de Romans (OP) ‘De la prédication de la sainte croix’: Une hypothèse sur son utilisation dans les guerres saintes du xv^e siècle,” Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 109 (2014): 588–624CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 609–11.

²³ Michel Andrieu, ed., Le pontifical romain au Moyen-Âge, vol. 3: Le Pontifical de Guillaume Durand (Vatican City, 1965), 541–43. For broader contexts see Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia, “From Pilgrimage to Crusade: The Liturgy of Departure, 1095–1300,” Speculum 88 (2013): 44–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Invisible Weapons: Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology (Ithaca, 2017). For the grey areas between divine power and superstition so often captured in the cross, see Bailey, Michael D., Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 2013), 175–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ The tab visible on the lower left margin of fol. 126a. It is possible to read the tab as marking the verso, but that page contains only a brief formula of absolution for crusaders against the Hussites. The lower margin of the verso is blank. See the description in Portnykh, “Exploring the Rebirth,” 17–19.

²⁵ Charlotte Ziegler, Zisterzienserstift Zwettl: Katalog der Handschriften des Mittelalters. Teil IV. Cod. 301–424 (Zwettl, 1997), 90–98, here at 93, #18.

²⁶ Zwettl Cod. 330, fol. 95v.

²⁷ For this sequence of events, which effectively ended any hope of further campaigning, see Grabmayer, Johannes, “Das Opfer war der Täter. Das Attentat von Belgrad 1456 – Über Sterben und Tod Ulrichs II. von Cilli,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 111 (2003): 286–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ The abbey's records, above all an early nineteenth-century Professbuch (StAZ 2/116), provide evidence of his career from the 1470s to the 1490s. I am grateful to the community's archivist and librarian, Dr. Andreas Gamerith, who provided this information through an email exchange on 1 Aug. 2022.

²⁹ Key context now in Herbert Krammer, “Hussitenkriege in Österreich in den 1420er und 1430er Jahren,” inGotteskrieger. Der Kampf um den rechten Glauben rund um Wien im 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Maria Theisen (Klosterneuburg, 2022), 94–102.

³⁰ For an overview of theoretical frameworks see Cubitt, Geoffrey, History and Memory (Manchester, 2013), esp. ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Klein, Herbert and Wagner, Hans, “Salzburger Domherren von 1300 Bis 1514,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 92 (1952): 1–81Google Scholar. For Erlbach's testament and the other materials noted here see Clm 14610, fols. 206r–211v; Friedrich Helmer and Julia Knödler, eds., Katalog der lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München. Die Handschriften aus St. Emmeram in Regensburg Bd. 5: Clm 14542 – 14690 (Wiesbaden, 2019), 278–96, here at 291. Compiled in its final form sometime after the late 1460s, the book came to modern Munich from the collection of the Benedictines of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, the community where George's brother lived as a monk.

³² Johannes Hofer, Johannes Capistran. Ein Leben im Kampf um die Reform der Kirche, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Rome-Heidelberg, 1964), 1:472–74 (Excursus 24).

³³ E.g., Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 5141 and 4143.

³⁴ Salzburg, St. Peter, Inc. 229 and B XI 19; see Jungwirth, Katalog der Handschriften.

³⁵ Hirtner and Fröstl, “Die Romreisen,” 168.

³⁶ Henny Grüneisen first reflected on the significance of these glosses in her private notes. Valentin Portnykh also notes them briefly in his recent treatment (above, n. 9, 56–57).

³⁷ A key passage from Grüneisen's notes makes the case this way: “Another, unaltered copy [of the German letter preserved in Salzburg b IX 28] is found in Clm 5141 (provenance, the monastery of Beuerberg), but this copy was likely taken from a Salzburg exemplar that, due to accident or, more probably to contemporary curiosity and enthusiasm, survives only partially. We mean the relevant exemplar of Clm 14610, a copy of the Salzburg Hofmeister Georg Elrlbach.” I am again grateful to Prof. Gabriella Annas for this transcription.

³⁸ Still foundational is Constable, Giles, Letters and Letter-Collections (Turnhout, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Walter Ysebaert, “Medieval Letters and Letter Collections as Historical Sources: Methodological Questions, Reflections, and Research Perspectives (Sixth–Fifteenth Centuries),” in Medieval Letters. Between Fiction and Document, eds. Christian Høgel and Elisabetta Bartoli (Turnhout, 2015), 33–62.

³⁹ Smith, Thomas W., “Scribal Crusading: Three New Manuscript Witnesses to the Regional Reception and Transmission of First Crusade Letters,” Traditio 72 (2017): 133–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “First Crusade Letters and Medieval Monastic Scribal Cultures,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71 (2020): 484–501.

⁴⁰ See Hirtner and Fröstl “Die Romreisen” and Munich, Bayerische Staatsblibliothek, Clm 27063, fols. 128r–132r; Karl Halm, ed., Catalogus codicum manu scriptorum Bibliothecae Regiae Monacensis, T. 4: Pt. 4: Clm 21406-27268 (Munich, 1881), 238.

⁴¹ Pavel Soukup, “The Polemical Letters of John of Capistrano against the Hussites: Remarks on Their Transmission and Context,” in The Grand Tour of John of Capistrano in Central and Eastern Europe (1451–1456), eds. Paweł Kras and James Mixson (Warsaw, 2018), 259–74, esp. 268 and n55. See also now Lucie Mazalová and Petra Mutlová, “Melancholy about the Lay Chalice: The Polemic between John of Capistrano and John of Borotín,” Graeco-Latina Brunensia 27 (2022): 85–99. The article provides an edition of Borotín's letter of 20 Aug. 1451, and notes the Munich manuscript on p. 90.

⁴² Mazalová and Mutlová, “Melancholy,” 87 and 92.

⁴³ Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, 1092, fols. 177v–181v. See Helssig, Rudolf, Die lateinischen und deutschen Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. Band 3. Die juristischen Handschriften (Wiesbaden, 1996), 219–234Google Scholar, here at 225.

⁴⁴ For an accessible treatment of the theoretical considerations see Cubitt, History and Memory, esp. 142–54.

⁴⁵ Karras, Ruth, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2002), esp. ch. 3Google Scholar. For broader context see the essays in Jennifer Thibodeaux, ed., Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2010), esp. her introduction, “Rethinking the Medieval Clergy and Masculinity,” 1–15.

⁴⁶ Helmut Lomnitzer, “Eghenvelder, Liebhard,” in Verfasserlexikon, 2, eds. Kurt Ruh et al. (Berlin, 1980), cols. 377–79; András Vizkelety, “Die Mobilität der weltlichen Intelligenz im deutschsprachigen Raum des spätmittelalterlichen Europas am Beispiel von Liebhard Eghenvelder, Stadtschreiber in Preßburg,” in Deutsche Sprache und Kultur im Raum Pressburg, ed. Wynfrid Kriegleder (Bremen, 2002), 219–30.

⁴⁷ Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. Ser. n. 3344. See Otto Mazal and Franz Unterkircher, Katalog der abendländischen Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek; “Series Nova” (Neuerwerbungen) 3: Cod. Ser. n. 3201–4000 (Vienna, 1967), 67–84.

⁴⁸ ÖNB, Cod. Ser. n. 3344, fols. 238r–243r; Mazal and Unterkircher, Katalog, 82–83.

⁴⁹ Herzogenburg, Stiftsbibliothek 15, described in Gerhard Winner, “Katalog der Handschriften der Stiftsbibliothek Herzogenburg” (typescript) (St. Pölten, 1978), 13–20. On fol. 5v: “Frater Leonhardus Stalekker hoc scripsit; orate pro me.”

⁵⁰ For the tradition and texts see Döring, Karoline D., Sultansbriefe: Textfassungen, Überlieferung und Einordnung (Wiesbaden, 2017)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ See Duncan Hardy's article in this collection.